Hamas-Fatah reconciliation an opportunity for Israel

The reactions in Israel were livid. Shortly after the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah was announced on April 23, Avigdor Liberman, the Israeli foreign minister, declared this was the end of the negotiations. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, gave Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, two choices: either reconciliation with Hamas or negotiations with Israel. But the internal Palestinian reconciliation produces a golden opportunity for Israel to have the Gaza Strip return to the Palestinian Authority (PA) instead of perpetuating it as a fortified Hamas stronghold. It is therefore incumbent on Israel's leadership to thoroughly gauge the significance of the current reconciliation.

It was against the backdrop of the targeted killing of its leaders during the second intifada that Hamas started undergoing a change, namely shifting from a terrorist organization, whose main calling was jihad against Israel through suicide bombings, to a life-seeking political movement. Those military operations posed a threat to Hamas. If it continued dispatching suicide bombers to Israel, its existence would be in peril.

Hamas' preparations for the PA elections, which were held in January 2006, further precipitated the changes in the movement, as did its unexpected victory in those elections. Hamas representatives made up the Palestinian government that was headed by Ismail Haniyeh. All of a sudden, it found itself responsible for the fate of the Palestinians, including the residents of the Gaza Strip.

It goes without saying that responsibility also mandated discretion. Having always sought to foil the agreements between the PLO and Israel, the movement came to grasp the vast difference between ideology and reality. It was a tough dilemma. On the one hand, it wanted to lead jihad against Israel. On the other hand, it wanted to prove that it could rule and provide Palestinians with a normal, civil life.